Ceylon Today Editorial

GOVT SITTING ON A POWDER KEG

18 January 2017

Western Province Chief Minister Isuru Devapriya had castigated the JVP alleging it was responsible for the aborted violence at the launching ceremony of the Chinese Development Zone Project in Hambantota. The UPFA's General Secretary went one better, claiming that the objective of the violent protest demonstration was to trigger "a Killing" as quoted in a daily last Friday.

If we are to go by what these two men, who know what's going on inside these political parties, claim as first-hand knowledge, can we link the two and come up with the conclusion that the JVP is a partner in this alleged process of trying to provoke a clash between mobs, (led by at least two Joint Opposition MPs) and the Police in which the organizers of this anarchy hope one of their men will be killed and thus give them 'reason' for wider anarchy.

These people were led by sitting members of Parliament to violate a Court Order, MPs who have sworn to uphold the Constitution and promote law and order instead of making attempts to spread anarchy by hoping to provoke killings and use that as a launch pad for anarchy in an attempt to break the back of the government.

This is beginning to look very much as though opposition forces which were rejected by a majority of the people in this country have begun implementing a decision to unleash extreme mayhem, to provoke the Police and security forces into responses which will result in at least collateral deaths and thus rouse the baser instincts of the easily misled masses who will then respond to their calls to anarchy, to become monsters bent on unleashing the pent up tyranny that was the hallmark of the previous regime, now a veritable pent up catastrophe waiting to explode out of control.

The government needs to get serious about the impending violence and chaos intended by the collective opposition and ensure that a legitimate and effective State response is put in place immediately to ensure these destabilization forces are not allowed to push through to fruition their tyrannical objectives by appealing to the baser instincts of the common man, turning them into monsters and unleashing them against peace, law and order.

Friedrich Neitzsche rightly observed that "He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster." The faces of those captured on camera at the violence in Hambantota showed traces of monsters.

On Monday, Police arrested another 20 men who had been persuaded by their political 'leaders' to flout the Court Order in an open show of illegitimate civil disobedience. But where are the ring leaders? Are we not missing something here? Are we not as usual, as the President put it a month ago, simply making a mockery of the law by going after the sprats and letting the sharks go free? Until and unless the government reveals the name of the man to whom the IGP gave an undertaking, seen and heard by the country on TV, that he would not arrest a particular individual, the entire nation will have no option, but to have doubts about the integrity of the entire Police force. What's peculiar still is the fact that the Police Commission has also to date not seen it fit to order this issue being ironed out with a believable public statement. Was it a once powerful leading opposition figure that phoned the IGP and asked him to not arrest that individual? Who, really, was that man and what is he guilty of? The people have the right to answers to these questions if they are expected to place their personal physical security in the hands of the Police force, especially when it has a question mark over its integrity.

This is especially important in the context that we do not know whether this powerful person, as discussed in some Sinhala newspapers, is the most probable Opposition's presidential candidate at the next election. If that be the case, the government needs to overhaul the Police force before we find ourselves dragged down in the now planned tyranny that's euphemistically called anarchy.

The next President, if he is not from government ranks, will obviously be from Opposition ranks and can and will implement a radically different foreign policy should the Unity Government lose clout at the next general election. In such a scenario, we will witness a return to racial/religious supremacist ideas and a witch hunt against the government's members of an unprecedented level. One can also expect a socio-political upheaval of enormous proportions and that's an observation made on the basis of what happened to freedoms in this country post-2015.

The government needs to get serious about the appalling gravity in today's oppositional political thinking.